Europe

Sunday’s general election in Spain was supposed to answer the question: will Spain be governed for the next four years by a right-wing coalition or by a left-wing coalition? If the question was easy to understand, the answer certainly isn’t. Like the four previous general elections, this one was inconclusive – only even more so.  The right-wing Partido Popular won 136 seats and Vox, even further to the right, won 33, giving a Partido Popular/Vox coalition a total of 169 seats – fewer than most polls had predicted. Unfortunately for the just over 11 million Spaniards who voted for these two parties, this leaves them seven seats short: in a

The world is waking up to pictures of fresh destruction in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, which has been under constant Russian fire since the grain export deal collapsed last week. At least one person has been killed and 19 more injured following missile strikes overnight. The roof of the recently-rebuilt Transfiguration Cathedral has partially collapsed, and there have been films of local residents trying to rescue icons and other sacred artefacts. The footage is striking – but a tiny part of what’s now at stake. Back in July 2022, Russia agreed not to destroy Ukraine’s grain-exporting infrastructure given how important the foodstuff is to Africa and world food

Nearly four weeks on from his failed coup, Evgeniy Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner group, has finally resurfaced in public. A video published on the social media app Telegram shows the mercenary chief apparently greeting newly–arrived fighters at a military camp in Belarus and praising them for their efforts on the front line in Ukraine. Due to the near-darkness in which the footage was taken, only Prigozhin’s silhouette is visible; nevertheless, his distinctive bald head, faintly illuminated by the setting sun, and his voice make him confidently identifiable. It appears the video was taken in recent days at a military camp identified by some as the one at Osipovichy in the eastern Mogilev region.

Apart from the 96 arrests and 255 burned cars, Bastille Day passed off without a hitch in France. A bullish Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, expressed his satisfaction in a tweet, thanking the 45,000 policemen and women who had been deployed across the country. It says much for the state of France that avoiding a riot on their national day is a cause for celebration.  Still, one can understand why the government is grateful for small mercies after the trauma of the recent uprising. The financial cost of the damage caused by the rioters is predicted to top €1 billion (£858 million), a staggering sum for a country that is already dangerously

Vilnius, Lithuania This week, the world’s eyes were on the Lithuanian capital Vilnius as it welcomed global leaders for Nato’s 74th summit. The event was a logistical challenge not helped by the fact that Vilnius is only 30km away from the border with Belarus, which is now home to Russian nuclear weapons. Commercial flights were suspended for the duration of the summit. Air defence systems were stationed. Four-thousand troops, undercover police officers and bomb detection dogs roamed the streets. A Boeing E-3 Sentry – Nato’s eyes in the sky – circled the capital while a 30km radius no-fly zone was imposed.  Shuttles to and from the exhibition centre had paint

In January this year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak outlined his five priorities for Britain against a hazy timetable. Meanwhile in France, after months of parliamentary opposition, strikes and demonstrations against his pension reforms, President Macron’s legislation gained assent by a constitutional sleight of hand. To appease the country’s heightened state of tension in May, Macron pledged to return France to stability and order within ‘one hundred days’. ‘We have before us 100 days of pacification, of unity, of ambition and action in the service of France’. That period expires on 14 July. An audit of either leader’s achievements to date has its challenges, especially given the recent most violent and widespread

Another day, another spat between Warsaw and Brussels. This time, Poland has declined to participate in the European Union’s latest plan to relocate migrants and asylum seekers within the bloc, with countries who refuse being expected to pay €20,000 per refugee. Hungary has also voted against the pact, while Malta, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria have quietly abstained.  On 15 June, the Polish parliament (the Sejm) went further and passed a resolution opposing the plan, with the ruling conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) announcing a national referendum on the matter. The referendum will take place on the same day as the general election in either October or November this year.  ‘We

As the Nato summit on international security opens this week in Vilnius, one obvious issue will be the success or otherwise of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. Apart from the liberation of a few villages, where are the victories earlier forecast by figures like head of military intelligence Kirill Budanov, who predicted the Ukrainian army would be in Crimea by the end of spring? Hopes of a quick push to the Azov sea, inspired by the retaking of Kharkhiv last September, have hit a sandbar this time round: denser Russian defence lines and widespread use of landmines. Come autumn, the weather will be against the Ukrainians too, the muddy season making a counter-offensive more

It’s satisfying when a jigsaw piece slots into place. Today we heard that Wagner leader Evgeny Prigozhin met Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin just a few days after his abortive mutiny of 23-24 June. That detail helps clear up some of the confusion of this past week. How come Prigozhin has been at liberty in Russia? We were told he would be going directly into exile in Belarus. Why is the Federal Security Service (FSB) apparently no longer seeking to arrest him? Is his Wagner mercenary army being disbanded or not?  Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has now acknowledged that, on 29 June, Prigozhin was among 35 people invited to a three-hour meeting in Moscow held to discuss

There are 17.9 million residents in the Netherlands, and this year the country expects 45,000 requests for asylum. Barges, tents and sports halls are full of people waiting for their claim to be processed, while the country is suffering a housing crisis largely due to historic under-building. Last year the country made headlines around the world when people were forced to sleep rough outside an asylum registration centre in Ter Apel, a baby died in a crowded sports hall in the town, and the country’s own Médecins Sans Frontières stepped in to offer aid. Whoever pulled the pin, some in the Netherlands are delighted at the prospect of a general election Asylum is the

Cultural issues, or ‘Woke Wars’, have surfaced to inflame an already tense general election held in the scorching temperatures of a Spanish summer. Spain’s third largest party – the hard-right populist Vox – is fuelling a backlash among Spaniards against town halls flying LBGT flags. Vox has insisted that the symbol of the LGBT movement be removed from the regional authority office in the Balearic Islands. A new socialist law targeting male domestic violence is another central plank in the party’s campaign. Vox, which is led by Santiago Abascal, argues that the law discriminates against men and should be amended to cover all domestic violence without specifying the sex of offenders. But will

Failing to tackle immigration isn’t only a problem for Rishi Sunak. The European Union is also struggling to deal with the issue. Now, Brussels has devised a plan for dividing up among its member states the would-be migrants at the EU’s doors. But Poland and Hungary are not happy. The EU used qualified majority voting, which is intended to allow a sufficient number of its larger countries to override a small number of holdouts, to push the idea through. Essentially each member state will be given a quota and could then be charged €20,000 (£17,000) per head for falling short. This is legally fairly watertight, since, under EU law, immigration is generally